


The One Who Got Away.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Series: Petya 'verse - All Petya Vorkosigan Fics [42]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Nature Versus Nurture, POV Aral Vorkosigan's First Wife, Then Flourish, Time Period: Reign of Ezar Vorbarra, Time Period: Reign of Gregor Vorbarra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 17:57:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17411540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: Therese Vorrutyer is keeping her baby.





	The One Who Got Away.

**Author's Note:**

> This is in the All Petya Fics series because it is Petya, but it shares nothing with any of the other fics except for backstory.

1.

It's when Ges tells her casually over tea that he's told Aral about her affairs that Therese knows she's going to have to run.

The Vorkosigans are very particular about their honor. Count Vorkosigan's made that clear. Her own family cares slightly less, but if Ges thinks this is something he can use on Aral, Therese isn't safe back home, either.

If she stays, they're going to take her baby. If she stays, they're going to kill her.

But if they don't _know_ \-- if all they know is that Therese has lovers-- she might be able to get away. She hasn't told anyone yet that she's pregnant. She gets to decide how to do it.

Therese goes to Princess Jacqueline. She apologizes for the affairs, it was very stupid of her, she realizes now she was too young, but, she adds, it wasn't her idea, the marriage. Her father wanted it. Her mother wanted it. Count Vorkosigan wanted it. The Emperor wanted it. She couldn't say no, could she? And she made mistakes, so many mistakes, she should never have slept with anyone other than Aral, she knows that, it was reckless, it was stupid, it was honorless. She regrets every moment of it, she would never do it again.

But now she's pregnant and scared, please, your highness, please, help me. She'll leave Barrayar. She'll never come back. All she needs is to get off planet. All she needs is a little bit of help.

And Princess Jacqueline speaks to Prince Xav. And Prince Xav speaks to the Emperor. And the Emperor speaks to Captain Negri.

And Pierre Vorrutyer is born on Komarr, without anyone ever testing him to see who his father was.

Because Therese had told them she cheated. Because Therese had told them she was pregnant. And she had let them form their own conclusions.

 

2.

She moves around in the first few years, finding her feet, getting used to being away from Barrayar, before she and Pierre settle down on Escobar. It's a good planet, a lot like Barrayar, but without the crushing political structure and all the relatives who want to kill her.

She's more careful this time with her lovers. She has a future to think of now. Back home, she hadn't. Back home, she realizes now, she had been all but daring them to kill her. But now there's space for her. She has a future. She has a son. She's not going to spoil it because of loving the wrong man.

And, she thinks sometimes, she's still married. She had never taken her marital oaths very seriously and she knows Aral never had either; he'd already gone back to sleeping with her brother by the week after she'd married him. But on Escobar, she gets to pick what kind of Vor she is, what kind of Barrayaran she still wants to be. Aral thinks he's a widower, she knows. Captain Negri had told her that she couldn't have any contact with anyone ever again, that everyone other than himself and the Vorbarra royals would think she was dead in dishonor, buried quickly and without an offering burnt. Aral thinks he's a widower.

But Therese knows herself not a widow. She's not divorced. They broke their oaths to each other, but the oaths still exist. It amuses her to take it seriously now. She still takes lovers, but it's not serious. On Escobar, it doesn't have to be serious. It's not shameful here. It's not dishonorable. She can do what she likes without risking her life or safety. She likes it. Even if she could, she wouldn't remarry.

She won't give Pierre a step-father. She won't give Pierre any authority other than herself. She wouldn't trust him to Barrayar and she won't trust him to any Escobaran either. He's her only link to home. And he's a darling, bright brown eyes, long dark curls so like her own. He's all that was good about Barrayar, she thinks. He reminds her of the good times in her family, before the end of it all. 

But Barrayar had been more bad than good by the end. Escobar is a new start and it's one she eagerly takes. She's nobody important here. The Escobarans consider her a political refugee after she'd told them about all the people in the Barrayaran government who want her dead, about how she'd had to fake her death to leave. She doesn't tell them about Pierre. If it ever gets back to Negri... she can't let that happen. Best to let everyone think that he's the son of no one important, that she's already forgotten the names of her lovers back home, that she was flighty, that she was never serious about them, that it was something casual until it abruptly became something she was about to be killed over. Because Count Vorkosigan kills bastards, you see, she tells the Escobarans, her eyes wide, and he doesn't much like the women who bear them, either. Even if it's his daughter-in-law, yes. _Especially_ if it's his daughter-in-law.

And the Escobarans believe her. And they let her make her own life without their interference.

If anyone back home has figured it out, she thinks, it would be Princess Jacqueline. But the princess had lost all of her children and most of her grandchildren barely a decade ago. If anyone was going to let Therese go and thereby keep Aral Vorkosigan's son safe from Barrayaran politics, it would be Aral's grandmother. Betans value life over honor. Princess Jacqueline might feel the same way. But Therese is never going to know for certain. She likes the thought, though, that someone on Barrayar would agree with what she's done.

But she doesn't need them to agree. She's free of them now. She knows the Barrayarans keep an eye on her, but there isn't much they can do to her here. Here, on Escobar, she can finally learn to breathe easy. She can learn how to value her own life. She'd been little more than a trophy to her lovers back home and she'd known it. They'd been her rebellion. Here... here she has lovers who like _her_. It's revolutionary. It's unbelievable.

It's nothing she's giving up.

 

3.

Therese finds she has a talent for finding things out. She always had at home, but here... here she can channel that into a career. At home, she'd be meant to use all her talents to support her husband and her Count. Here, she gets to use them for herself. No one expects her to be standing behind a man. She can stand by herself and live for no one else.

Therese Vorrutyer, Investigative Reporter, has her first big break after five years on Escobar and her colleagues take her out to celebrate. She has _colleagues_. She has friends. She has people who have no idea who Lady Vorkosigan is. _Her son_ has no idea who that is.

Pierre is going to school in the neighborhood, never having known any other life, and Therese is... Therese has a _career_. No one has called her Lady Therese in her son's entire lifetime. No one has called her Lady Vorkosigan. It's a marvel, how much she doesn't miss it. She doesn't miss home. She has the only bright part of it with her, sleeping in his own bedroom, with hand-drawn pictures on the wall and a stuffed rhinoceros in a place of pride. No one at her son's school looks askance at her for having a job. No one at her son's school looks askance at her for anything at all. She's good at fitting in. She hadn't thought she would be, that there could be a life for her outside of Barrayar, but she's made one. She's done it. She's succeeded where no one would have ever let her step.

And she likes it. She likes ferreting out secrets, she likes hunting things down. She likes helping with justice, real justice, not whatever passes for it on Barrayar, with private law and private vendettas. And she likes Escobar. The more she looks into it, the more she braces herself for it being just like home, the more she finds out that it's not. That no one here expects her to be a Vor lady, that no one here even knows what that is. No one has any expectations of who she is. Half of the parents at Pierre's school have never even _heard_ of Barrayar.

And Pierre-- Therese has to keep stopping herself from telling him not to do things. That it's not right. That it's not proper for a Vor lord to like these things. But Pierre isn't a Vor lord. He won't ever be Count Vorkosigan. He gets to grow up how she wants him to, how _he_ wants himself to. If he wants to play at being a mechanic, he's allowed to. If he wants to say he's going to build groundcars one day, he's allowed to. The world is bigger for him here, too. Her son is never going to be a General. But her son can be so much more. Or so much less. She came here to be free of Barrayar. And that means free of those expectations as well. She isn't Vor here. Vor doesn't mean anything here. Vorrutyer doesn't mean anything here. Pierre is allowed to dream, just as Therese is. They're allowed to build a different future. She has to remind herself of it sometimes when ingrained habits bite at her heels, but she can't let them win. She didn't have a future on Barrayar. But she has a future here.

And they get to decide what that future looks like. It's terrifying. It's exhilarating. It's better than Therese had ever thought it would be. In the worst of it, she'd wondered if she'd live another year. But now she has decades in front of her, all ready for her to fill them however she wants.

She won't take it for granted. And she won't let Pierre think there's any other way to live.

 

4.

When the Barrayaran fleet arrives, Therese knows it's too late for her to run. She'd thought about it, when the rumors had started. But it had seemed so farcical. Barrayar, invading _here_? Preposterous. 

It doesn't seem as preposterous anymore.

She makes Pierre call her every hour. He's twenty-two now, independent. Normally he would never do it. Normally, she would never ask. But when she had asked, he had nodded and that had been it.

Because Barrayar is in the skies. Because her brother is up there. Because her husband is up there.

And Therese is dead on Barrayar. And her son doesn't exist, at best. At best, they kill him on sight.

At worst, it's not worth thinking about.

She spends the entire invasion worrying and working to distract herself from worrying. Pierre gets into a few fights, nothing serious, but suddenly people are paying attention to _Vorrutyer_. Therese explains blithely that it's a large family and, anyway, she hasn't seen any of them since they chased her off the planet instead of murdering her. But suddenly Barrayar has come after them and it's not easy. At least no one is asking her about Aral. A few Escobaran intelligence officers had come by, but they'd only cared about Ges. And she couldn't tell them anything about Barrayaran military strategy in the slightest. They hadn't cared about old family gossip. Ges hasn't tried to contact her at all. She hopes Ges doesn't know she's alive.

After the Barrayarans have been routed, she arranges a vacation for herself and Pierre on Beta Colony. There won't be any Barrayarans there; they hate Barrayar as much as Escobar does these days.

"You're old enough to know about your father," she says to Pierre after the first day on planet, after Pierre had dragged her to the Betan Planetfall Museum to see how Beta Colony had built itself out of the sand. He'd always liked to take things apart to see how they'd worked. When he was eighteen, he'd finally taken that course on groundcar mechanics and promptly gotten himself an apprenticeship at the garage three blocks away. He'd been so proud of himself and Therese had wondered what he would be like if Aral had gotten him, if he'd have turned him into Ges, if he would never have truly loved anything. She'd been worried when Pierre had started dating Gabriel from next door, watching for any look of her brother in her son, but there'd been nothing. Pierre's free of all of that. Barrayar hasn't touched him. But he should know about his father. Aral could always come _back_.

Pierre doesn't look very interested. "He butchered civilians on Komarr, then came to our front door to do it to us, too. And I read the stories about the prisoners of war. I don't think you need to tell me much more. I'm not going to try to track him down."

And Therese never told him. She never... "I know I never told you who your father was."

"Yes, you did," Pierre says. "You said you were married to Aral Vorkosigan and they all wanted to kill you because you weren't a prude about who you slept with, so you had to run away. And then I was born on Komarr," he says, slipping into the Family History Recitation, the way she'd told him where they'd both come from when he was still so small, "and then we took a ship to Pol and then we came to Escobar because you liked it better there, and we moved to our house because it was being sold by someone who'd also been on the run, so he knew what it was like. And then I grew up and my father showed up to try to murder everyone."

Well, that's certainly succinct. And correct. "Pierre," she starts, not knowing what to say. She'd always left it ambiguous with everyone. Barrayar had never even thought to look. But of course she'd slipped with her son. Of course he'd seen through what she didn't say directly. She couldn't maintain ambiguity. But he'd never asked about who his father was. She'd thought it was because he didn't care. She hadn't thought it was because he already knew, and still didn't care. "Pierre, you can't tell anyone who it is. If anyone finds out--"

"I won't let anybody," Pierre says fiercely. "I never told. You always said it was dangerous, that he wanted to kill you, that everyone wanted to kill you, your brother, your husband. I never told, I'm never going to. So what that Aral Vorkosigan was my father, that doesn't mean anything. You're my mother, _that_ means everything."

Her boy, always so loyal. She doesn't know where he gets it from; she never considered herself to have any of that mythological Vor loyalty. Aral certainly never had a drop of it. But Pierre is different. She can see so much of herself in him, but his horizons are lower. He has her drive, her ambition, but while hers had been enough to free her from Barrayar, Pierre's is quieter, less extreme, but no less firm. She hadn't planned a grand future for him; he'd planned his own for himself. He's focused on their family and his work and his hobbies. He doesn't want to change himself or change the world. He's not the type to ever run from home. He'd never consider it. And if he had to, he'd try to take it with him. She hopes she's taught him how to leave if he has to, but she doesn't think it's a lesson he's taken to heart. Pierre has the loyalty to stay and fight to the death to keep things; Therese hadn't fought Barrayar, she'd manipulated it until they'd thrown her out the way she'd needed them to. She'd saved her life through it. True Vor might have stayed and fought. And died, uselessly, pointlessly.

Therese wasn't going to stay and die pointlessly. She wasn't even going to live that way when she was still there. Therese hadn't seen the point of her wedding vows. She'd never been a good vassal. But, unlike her, Pierre likes rules. It had been a great help in raising him; it had been a great terror in raising him. She worries about him, especially with Barrayar having been in the sky above them, never letting her forget. Pierre likes doing what he's supposed to do. She knows what Aral would have made of him: another copy of himself. She hates to think of it, what Barrayar would have made him, would have turned him into. She wouldn't recognize her own son. But she would never have had a chance. She never would have lived to see it. She'd always known that. Aral would have her son over her dead body, either then or now.

If they'd found out about it before she left, she would never even have known him. If they'd found out about him during the invasion, if the invasion had succeeded... Therese has Aral Vorkosigan's only legitimate son. They'd have destroyed him as an adult as sure as they would have destroyed him every day since infancy. He'd have been torn to pieces by Count Vorkosigan, by Aral, by Ges. If they'd had him from birth, they would never have let him be anything like he is today. And if they'd found him during the invasion, they'd have destroyed the man that Therese had built and turned him into a loyal Barrayaran, if they hadn't just killed him for considering himself Escobaran and never Vor. 

She'd saved her own life from Barrayar and she'd brought back the best of it, she thinks. But Pierre would never think himself Barrayaran. And Therese would never want him to.

It's been decades since she's thought herself truly Barrayaran either. She doesn't miss it.

 

5.

It's been over thirty years since Barrayar had come to her door, but she is not surprised when a messenger from the Barrayaran embassy arrives, hand-carrying a letter. 

Two months ago, Pierre had said, a Lord Auditor Vorkosigan had tried to shove his way into the shop and Pierre had thrown him out. Therese doesn't know what kind of son Aral had raised, but she knows Vor lords. They wouldn't allow an insult like that to go by without a response. Aral's son would have dug. And someone used to ferreting out details like an Auditor might decide to do what Negri never had. The Escobarans are not as paranoid as Barrayarans are; if the Barrayarans wanted to get a sample of Pierre's to test, she can't imagine it would be too difficult. The only thing that had kept them safe was that no one had ever thought to do it.

But if Aral is contacting her after all these years, someone has now thought to do it.

"Milady," the letter begins. Therese feels herself still. No one's called her that in a lifetime. And his voice is rougher now, older, so much older. They're both older, but he looks it. His suffering is etched onto his face. Good, she thinks. That's good. 

It takes her a long moment to recognize what Aral's wearing as his House uniform. There are so many things she's forgotten about Barrayar that she never would have thought she could forget. But all the times she's seen Aral since then, all the times she couldn't avoid his image, he was always dressed in military uniform. He was never presented as a Vorkosigan. He was never presented as the man she married. 

Aral continues, "I did not know you were alive until my second day as Regent of Barrayar. I was newly married and had a son on the way. When Captain Negri told me about you, I could only see myself. I could see that you had moved on and created another life for yourself. I chose not to contact you. I felt certain that you had all but forgotten me. I know now that you would have had a reminder of me every time you looked at your son. Our son."

Therese bristles at that. She's never thought of Pierre as Aral's son. He's only ever been _her_ son.

Aral goes on for some time, explaining how he feels, his shock, his horror that he had spent fifty years not knowing his son, twenty years not knowing his grandchildren. He says nothing about regretting the fifty years of not knowing her. But Aral, for all his faults, was never a liar. And she certainly hasn't spent fifty years regretting leaving him. They'd known each other and hated each other. The only thing linking them now is Pierre's genetics. She doesn't regret leaving Aral or Barrayar, and she doesn't regret keeping the secret from him. There's nothing he can say to make her regret any of it.

"I am across the wormhole now on Sergyar," the letter finishes. "I pray you will allow me to come visit you. I think we have much to speak of." And he signs off: Aral.

She finds the anger comes slower these days, but it still comes. It's muted now, not as sharp as it once was, not as vengeful. But it's still there. It brings up too many memories that she'd been happy to forget. It brings up too many frustrations. What could she have become back home, if none of this had happened, if she had never married Aral, if she had never felt she had to run? What had been stolen from her by her family, by her planet? What might have happened if she'd stayed?

But she'd always known what would have happened if she stayed. One way or another, she'd have died. She'd have been killed by Aral, or by his father, or by Ges, or by her own father, or maybe even by her own hand, too angry at Barrayar to find a future there, and too consumed with rage to find a life for herself outside Barrayar. She's built herself a life from the ashes and she can't know if it's better or worse, but she knows the joys of Escobar, and Aral just sat there and reminded her of all the pains of home. Reminded her of everything she'd been happy to leave behind.

She never wants to see him again.

And it's polite of him to ask. But he's the Viceroy of Sergyar. It's not _her_ permission to visit that he needs. But he's not inviting her to Sergyar. That also means something. It means that she's dead and buried, as far as Barrayar's concerned. But if she steps foot back into Barrayaran space, she's alive again.

And she knows it's not her that he wants to see. It's Pierre. He wants to see what happened to his son. It must cost him something to say he wants to see her and not Pierre, but he must know he won't get anywhere by addressing Pierre directly. His son would certainly have told him about the welcome that Pierre would give any Vorkosigan.

She considers responding to ask what the Barrayaran laws were on bigamy, it's been so long, she can't be expected to recall. She considers asking if he'd ever burnt an offering for her or if he'd consigned her to history and never thought of her again. She considers asking what his wife knows about her and when she had found out. She considers asking if he knows that what he did was just as bad as what she did, but only one of them had their lives threatened over it. She considers asking for an apology.

She discards all responses. She decides to treat him as he's treated her all these days.

She throws the letter out and forgets about him.

 

+1

Pierre's up to his wrists in flour when his youngest comes into the kitchen. "Papa, there's a man at the door, he says he's Count Vorkosigan."

Pierre doesn't look up. "Tell him to bugger off."

"That's not a nice word," Bella says.

"Well, he's not a nice man," Pierre says. There's an unwelcome noise and Pierre looks up and sees that Vorkosigan who'd bothered him five years ago. "You already let him in," he sighs.

"I did," Bella agrees. "I'm going to Mila's, I'll be home before dinner."

"Come here," Pierre demands and kisses her forehead before letting her go. She probably won't remember to come back for dinner; he's experienced age sixteen before with her siblings. And he's fed Mila twice this week, it's their turn for an extra teenager. "The old man's finally dead, then?" he asks Vorkosigan when Bella's shut the front door behind her.

Vorkosigan winces. "He was your father."

"No, he provided semen," Pierre says. He washes the flour off his hands and dries them on a towel. Life goes on even when Barrayar shows up; Pierre'd learned that well enough. And he's keeping it as far away from his kids as he can, but he still needs to finish dinner. "I don't want you here, you're trespassing. Please leave."

"I've come to invite you to the funeral," Vorkosigan says, rocking back on his heels. "Please," he adds, clearly not a man used to ever using that word. Pierre remembers all his mother's stories about Barrayar. He expects Vorkosigan never has to ask for anything. He just takes it. Pierre's Escobaran; he knows all about _that_.

"He didn't bother coming to Mama's funeral two years ago, why should I bother going to his?" Pierre asks. He hadn't expected Aral Vorkosigan to attend. He isn't sure what he would have done if he had. But Pierre's gone his entire life not knowing his father and not caring that he didn't know him. He's not about to start now that the man's finally dead.

"You were his son, even if you don't think he was your father," Vorkosigan tries. "On Barrayar, it's important."

Pierre rolls his eyes. "I really don't care about Barrayar."

Vorkosigan frowns. "Then could I have an offering? On Barrayar, it's customary--"

"To burn things when people die, yes, I know," Pierre says. Mama's will had left clear instructions that she'd wanted none of that. 

"So will you give me something? Hair is customary. Or a letter, if you have things you want to say," Vorkosigan says.

Pierre refrains from his instinctive offer. Vorkosigan's father just died. He's not going to be rude. "No," he says. He'd be happy to piss on Aral Vorkosigan's grave, but he won't bother. He has five children and two infant grandchildren that he'd never wanted Aral Vorkosigan to touch. He doesn't have to worry about that anymore. This Vorkosigan, despite his presence, has given Pierre the gift of peace of mind. Aral Vorkosigan can't haunt his family anymore. Pierre doesn't have to worry about Barrayar coming after them anymore.

He can hear Gabriel moving around upstairs. Julian and his wife will be coming by in an hour to drop Thomas off so they can have a night to themselves. He doesn't have time for Barrayar to invade.

"Now, I think it's time for you to leave," Pierre Vorrutyer says firmly and escorts Vorkosigan out of his home.

**Author's Note:**

> [this post on dreamwidth](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1029830.html); [this post on tumblr](https://lannamichaels.tumblr.com/post/181989195055/the-one-who-got-away-4564-words-by-lanna)


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